Bayard Rustin Film Screens to Honor Gay Pride Month

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
He was there at most of the important events of the Civil Rights Movement - but always in the background. The film “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” – which screens in DC three times this week -- asks "Why?" It presents a vivid drama, intermingling the personal and the political, about one of the most enigmatic figures in 20th-century American history. One of the first "freedom riders," an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the march on Washington, intelligent, gregarious and charismatic, Bayard Rustin was denied his place in the limelight for one reason - he was gay. “Brother Outsider” contributes a fascinating new chapter to our understanding of both progressive movements and gay life in 20th-century America. “Brother Outsider” is being screened in honor of Gay Pride Month by the DC Labor FilmFest twice on Tuesday at noon, at the American Federation of Teachers  and at AFGE Local 12 (at the Department of Labor) and then at noon on Friday at the AFL-CIO. The screenings are co-sponsored by the AFT, AFGE 12, the AFL-CIO, and the DC chapters of Pride at Work and the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Film note courtesy California Newsreel; photo by the Associated Press